Children's Hospital Admits Taking Organs

January 31, 2001|By MARJORIE MILLER Los Angeles Times

LONDON — One of the leading children's hospitals in Britain illegally harvested hearts, brains, eyes and other organs from thousands of dead children without the consent of their parents, according to a government report published Tuesday.

The report blamed a rogue pathologist at Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool for systematically removing "every organ from every child who had a post-mortem" between 1988 and 1995.

But investigators also found stockpiled body parts, including the head of an 11-year-old boy, at the hospital and a Liverpool University research center that predated the term of Dutch pathologist Dick van Velzen.

A separate organ census issued by the Health Department on Tuesday indicated that removing body parts without "informed consent" is common in English hospitals.

The revelations come on the heels of admissions by Alder Hey, Birmingham Children's Hospital and London's Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children that they had sold live tissue removed from children during surgery to pharmaceutical companies for drug production -- again, without the knowledge of parents.

The collection of organs for medical research is common in many countries, including the United States, and many of the Alder Hey families said they would have given their permission if they had been asked.

They said they resented that their children's bodies were "taken apart like scrap from old cars" without regard for the family's feelings.

"As far as I'm concerned, it's like grave robbery," said Tracy Fabiani, who lost a baby at the Liverpool hospital and was given the body back minus organs.

The organ scandals have fueled public distrust in the National Health Service. Health Secretary Alan Milburn condemned the NHS this week for its anachronistic attitudes and called for a "revolution" in a medical culture that has put the word of a doctor and the needs of researchers above the rights of patients and parents.

Speaking to Parliament on Tuesday, Milburn apologized to the families of more than 2,000 children whose organs were removed at Alder Hey.

He blamed van Velzen for ordering the "unethical and illegal" collection of organs and accused the pathologist of lying to parents and falsifying medical records to cover up his activities.

The case has been turned over to police, he said.

Van Velzen, an expert on sudden infant death syndrome, is on leave from his job at a Dutch hospital and has been unavailable for comment.

He is wanted by Canadian authorities in connection with a stash of children's organs discovered in Nova Scotia, where he worked after leaving Liverpool.

Milburn said that more than 2,000 children's hearts, a large number of brain parts, eyes taken from fetuses, more than 1,500 fetuses or bodies from stillbirths, and a number of children's heads and bodies were obtained without consent.

Documentation of the organs was "shocking and disrespectful," according to the report.

One entry relating to a 9-week-old fetus said: "Inflated monster. Humpty Dumpty." They were stored in jars and stacked in a dingy basement for years.

Alan Jarvis, whose son, Matthew, 4, died at Alder Hey in 1990, said he had no idea until late last year that son's heart, brain, lungs and testes were removed after his death.

"We thought that Matthew was cremated as a whole body, not a part body," Jarvis said. "But the essence of Matthew is left behind in a bucket in Alder Hey to this day."

The 500-page Alder Hey report said the store of organs remained largely unused for research or education.

The Liverpool hospital apologized Tuesday and announced suspensions of high-ranking staff.

In the separate Health Department organs census, the government's chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson, said law governing the removal and retention of organs from dead patients in Britain was "unclear, ambiguous and aging."

Donaldson said 100,000 hearts, brains, lungs and other organs are held by hospitals and medical schools across England, many of them taken without the knowledge of the dead patients' families.

In many cases, relatives were not told that by signing a consent form for a post-mortem examination, they also were agreeing to allow pathologists to remove organs. Donaldson urged major changes in the law.

Last week, newspapers revealed that in addition to storing organs from dead patients, Alder Hey had taken live tissue from patients and given it to a French drug company in exchange for cash donations.

Birmingham Children's Hospital subsequently admitted that it had allowed tissue samples to go to an unnamed pharmaceutical company for research and, on Tuesday, the prestigious Great Ormond Street added that it had done so as well.